


you and i were fireworks (that went off too soon)

by tesselated



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 18:19:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4273269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tesselated/pseuds/tesselated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What’d you wish for?” Bucky asks him, eyes opening again to look over at Steve. </p><p>Steve furrows his eyebrows in confusion, and Bucky smiles at him. “On your birthday. The candles. What’d you wish for?”</p><p>++</p><p>In a medic tent after Azzano, Steve sits at Bucky's bedside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you and i were fireworks (that went off too soon)

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday america & happy birthday steve i hope you wanted this sad drabble because it's what i'm giving you
> 
> (set during the war, minor allusions to bucky's torture)

“We missed your birthday.” 

Steve jumps at the words, slurred in a hoarse voice from the figure slumped on the cot next to him. Steve doesn’t say anything, just tears his eyes away from the notebook he was drawing in; the pages are edged with mud now, warped from the rain seeping into his jacket pockets. 

He stares at Bucky, curled in on himself but facing Steve, face clear and open with his eyes closed. The morphine is slurring his words for him, and easing the crease of frustration that had been permanently fixed between his eyebrows since Steve pried him off the table in Azzano a few days earlier. 

“Stevie,” Bucky insists, his eyes fluttering open as he repeats the same words, “we missed your birthday.” 

“Yeah, I guess we did.” Steve mutters in response, fighting the urge to reach out and brush Bucky’s hair off his forehead. 

“Did you watch the fireworks without me?” Bucky asks. His voice is breathless and rough and reminds Steve of nights Bucky spent smelling like whiskey. 

Steve doesn’t stop himself this time, and lets his hand find Bucky’s forehead in the low light of the tent. He feels feverish and lets out a sigh at Steve’s fingers carding through his hair, lets his eyes go shut again.

“I missed you, Bucky.” Steve says quietly, like if he says it too loud the truth of it will smother them both under its weight. 

“What’d you wish for?” Bucky asks him, eyes opening again to look over at Steve. 

Steve furrows his eyebrows in confusion, and Bucky smiles at him. “On your birthday. The candles. What’d you wish for?”

Steve keeps running his hands through Bucky’s hair, more for himself than for Bucky. “Didn’t have a cake.” 

“Damn shame.” Bucky says with one corner of his mouth still lifted. 

Steve Rogers spent his twenty-fifth birthday in a hotel room in Minneapolis with his blue tights on a hanger in the closet, hearing the distant pops of a small city fireworks show and wondering if Bucky Barnes was still alive. Here, four months later and faced with the boy he fell in love with turned into a stitched-up wound, he finds it difficult to think of anything he’s wished for in the past ten years that didn’t wind back around to Bucky. 

“What’d they do to you?” Steve whispers, half-hoping Bucky won’t hear him. It might be wrong to ask him like this, doped up and stupid, but Steve decides he doesn’t care. 

Bucky does hear him, blinks up slow at him and the crease between his eyebrows reappears. Not from frustration, but from confusion, maybe. “I don’t know.”

That’s a scarier answer than Steve had been hoping for, and he breathes deep for a moment, takes another moment to marvel at what breathing deep feels like. 

“Your hands are bigger.” Bucky says, bringing Steve’s attention back. 

He grins, brings his thumbs down to Bucky’s cheekbones. “You got skinny.”

“War does that to you, I guess. Well, not to _you_ , apparently.” Bucky huffs a laugh, and Steve gives a surprised chuckle. 

“Well, I couldn’t have gotten much skinnier.” Steve jokes, and Bucky lets out a real laugh, hoarse and a little loud. 

Steve wonders how many times this scene has played in reverse, Bucky huddled over Steve’s bed while pain medication made him babble. He blinks that thought away because it makes him feel out-of-place, makes him aware of how removed from the reality of the first twenty-four years of his life he is now. 

“Steve.” Bucky says, sounding more lucid than he has been. Steve’s hands are still on his face, and he doesn’t want to bring them away. On the march back to camp, Bucky was mostly unconscious, slumped against or over Steve’s shoulder roughly, the dynamic unfamiliar. This, his fingertips against Bucky’s forehead, is something he knows. He doesn’t want to give it up yet.

“Yeah?” Steve asks. Bucky brings his calloused hands up to rest on Steve’s wrists, and Steve watches him learn that he can no longer encircle them with his index finger and thumb. He looks disappointed.

“Make a wish.” Bucky says.

“It’s closer to Christmas than my birthday, Buck.” Steve says with a half-hearted smile.

“Make a goddamn wish, Rogers.” Bucky insists, trying to make it sound like a joke but looking at Steve with serious eyes. 

Steve closes his eyes for a moment, considers. _Let us make it out of this_. When he opens them again, Bucky is looking at him expectantly. 

“Well?” He asks, his hands still on Steve’s arms. They must look a sight, hands tangled together.

“Wished you would get to take a shower soon. You smell like shit.” Steve offers with a smirk and Bucky smiles at him.

“Uh-huh,” he mutters. His eyes close again, his hands going lax and heavy.

It’s quiet and Steve wonders if Bucky fell back asleep, like he’d been doing for the better part of the past day. But then he shifts out of Steve’s grip, rolls over onto his back and sighs. “You shouldn’t have come out here.”

Steve doesn’t say anything to that. Anything he’d say would start a fight, and Bucky has had enough of those already.

“I know you want to argue with me right now like the stubborn fucking mule you are, but you don’t get it, Stevie.” Bucky says, sounding tired. “You should have stayed home. But you’re goddamn well and here now, so are you going to kiss me or not?”

Steve laughs, startled. No one’s come into the medic tent for a couple hours now, since Bucky’s the last one to be stuck here and no one knows what he’s recovering from. It's safe enough. 

“Yeah, I guess I am,” Steve says, leaning over and letting his hands rest gingerly on Bucky’s jaw. Their lips touch and something desperate in Steve cracks, reminds him how much he missed this. Bucky’s arms reach up eagerly to hang around Steve’s neck and Steve becomes aware of how hard they’re both breathing, like the air got knocked out of their lungs from the impact. 

“I love you, you fucking moron. Noble dumbass.” Bucky breathes.

Steve laughs, feeling sad and relieved and too many other things to keep track of. “Get some sleep.”

Bucky looks like he’s going to take that advice before looking back up at Steve again with a concentrated expression. “We’ll be okay.” 

It’s a statement, not a question, and Steve smiles. “Yeah. We’ll be okay.”

Bucky falls asleep again and Steve looks down at his abandoned notebook, a half-finished profile drawn in charcoal. He picks it back up, draws in the familiar bump in Bucky’s nose from when he got it broken in a fistfight, and repeats to himself like a mantra, “We’ll be okay.”


End file.
